William Perlman/The Star-Ledger The monorail that travels over Route 1&9 is stuck on the tracks after an equipment failure at Bayway Switching Station in Elizabeth left 20,000 households without power according to Public Service Electric and Gas Company in Newark.

NEWARK — Power has been restored to Newark Liberty International Airport and to some 20,000 other PSE&G customers who experienced outages this afternoon, the utility company said.

Customers started receiving electricity again around 4 p.m., PSE&G said in a statement.

The widespread outages reached homes and businesses throughout Union County and in parts of Essex County.

“Parts of the terminal are without power,” Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said earlier in the afternoon of the airport.

He said some flights are being impacted, but didn’t provide details at the time. The airport's website listed dozens of delayed flights on several different carriers, including Continental Airlines, which controls most of the hub's departures.

PSE&G attributed the outage to a an equipment failure inside the utility's Bayway Switching Station in Elizabeth. The facility was undergoing upgrades when the failure happened around 2:30 p.m., PSE&G said.

In addition to the airport, electric service was disrupted in parts of Hillside, Elizabeth, Union Township, Roselle, Linden, Kenilworth, Irvington and Newark, where the Anheuser-Busch plant had shut down. There were reports that trams had stopped moving at the airport.

John Reynolds, a Westfield man on his way to Los Angeles, said the power had shutdown in Terminal C around 2:20 p.m.

“Everybody’s just standing around and waiting,” Reynolds said at the time, noting that some emergency lights were still on and that he heard announcements for international departures.

“There’s no movement,” he said by phone around 3 p.m. “There were a couple planes that were rolling around on the tarmac after it happened.”